Two weeks ago, I attended the Book of Mormon Studies Association conference in Logan, Utah. Across two days, a few threads kept resurfacing: how earlier generations of Latter-day Saints visualized and wrote about the Book of Mormon, how the book came to be translated (and how it is translated now), and how its readers have reckoned with its legacy for Indigenous peoples. Here’s a recap of the sessions I was able to attend.

Friday, October 9

Oral book reviews. The opening session was a series of short book reviews. My favorite moment came from Liz Fenton, reviewing The Deseret Alphabet: A Fixed and Unalterable Sound, who promised the book would appeal to anyone who loves nineteenth-century gossip, “especially gossip about men named Orson.” The reviews I caught were largely positive. Catie Nielsen, for example, praised Rosalynde F. Welch and Adam S. Miller for writing devotional literature grounded in real scholarship in Seven Gospels: The Many Lives of Christ in the Book of Mormon.

Book of Mormon imagery from 1897. Jennifer Champoux and Paul Reeve presented a set of 1897 illustrations designed for flipcharts and cards to teach children Book of Mormon stories. By modern standards, both the images’ portrayal of race and the accompanying catechisms are problematic. Champoux and Reeve placed the images carefully in context, tracing the artistic traditions Latter-day Saints inherited from their Euro-American surroundings and the Church’s transitional moment at the time. Because they’re preparing a publication, they asked attendees not to share details or images, so I’ll leave that to them.

Music and the Book of Mormon. We then moved to the choir room of the institute building for a music panel. Ruth Eldredge discussed sound and music in the Book of Mormon, noting how rare they are in the text, perhaps partly because of Nephi’s wariness toward music. Christian Asplund and Sharon Harris performed several short songs Asplund composed in the style of Lieder, setting Book of Mormon texts. Peter McMurray then played a recording of “the Ballad of Shiz,” which he had performed the day before with a band he calls the Gadianton Robbers. It recounts Coriantumr beheading Shiz in death metal style, and it was both grotesque and mesmerizing. (Most of us had lunch together afterwards, and I had the chance to visit with McMurray, whose current work as a musicologist at Cambridge focuses on the intersection of Islam and sound, especially in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. Since a lot of my attention the last year or so has been focused on the history of bells due to my book on the Bells at Temple Square, we talked about the silencing of bells in the Ottoman Empire. It seemed to surprise him to have a random person like myself bring up the topic.)

How the Book of Mormon was translated. In the afternoon, Robin Jensen examined how the earliest revelations on record describe the translation process. He made two suggestions that stood out in particular. First, Doctrine and Covenants 7, a translation of a short text about John the Beloved, may be the translation Oliver Cowdery managed before his attempts failed. The revelation sits between revelations about Cowdery’s translation efforts, both chronologically and physically on the manuscript pages where they were first recorded. Second, the revelation to Hyrum Smith (Doctrine and Covenants 11:10–11) promises him a gift if he asks in faith, and its emphasis on Christ’s power and voice suggests that Hyrum may have understood translation as a kind of direct interaction with Christ. In the same session, Richard Saunders shared some interesting information about the eight witnesses.

Theology and philosophy. The other afternoon session turned to theological and philosophical questions. Joseph Spencer read the Book of Mormon through the concept of the katechon, an unseen force or figure that holds back the full manifestation of the Antichrist and the arrival of the apocalypse. He argued that the Nephites were marked for destruction because of their sinfulness from early in the record, which explains the sense of imminence in the Small Plates. The repeated Christian revivals of the gospel in Mosiah, Alma, and Helaman kept postponing that destruction, creating space for the successful missionary work among the Lamanites during the same period. Steven Peck, drawing on Henri Bergson, offered a philosophical account of time in which God does not stand outside of time surveying it from beginning to end. Instead, time is continually being created and shaped by the impressions of the past.

Closing the day. Avi Steinberg ended Friday with reflections on writing about the Book of Mormon and translating the Bible, along with some notes on his experiences as an activist in Israel. His passion for his work was evident, and it made for a memorable close.

Saturday, October 10

Early Latter-day Saint poetry and literature. Michael Austin and Rachel Helps explored how the Book of Mormon appeared in early Latter-day Saint poetry and in literature from around the turn of the twentieth century. Their examples included poetry from the 1840s that John Taylor likely wrote, a play Susa Gates wrote and directed for young women in the Church to teach a Book of Mormon story, and a novel based on the Zeniff colony. Like the 1897 images, these works reflect racial attitudes that are troubling today. They still offer a window into how Latter-day Saints understood and talked about the Book of Mormon in their own time.

Translation plenary. A plenary session on translation followed. Tod Harris discussed philosophies of translation and how the Church approaches translating the Book of Mormon and other scriptures within the broader field of biblical translation. Jim Richards described a modern paraphrase of the Book of Mormon he is preparing, which aims to capture what the text’s words would have meant in 1830, render that in modern English, and trim unnecessary repetition. I’m eager to hear more about it. John Bringhurst described his experiences translating the Book of Mormon multiple times into a Mayan language. Both Bringhurst and Richards noted that around 2010 the First Presidency instructed the translation department to favor literal over idiomatic translation. The instruction surprised them at first, but they have been pleased with the results and with how Latter-day Saint readers have received the translations.

Land and prisons. In the afternoon, Margaret Olsen Hemming discussed the role of land in Latter-day Saint theology, from Joseph Smith to the Book of Mormon to the present, with particular attention to Latinx and Native American members. Kimberly Matheson examined the role of prisons in Book of Mormon narratives, centering on Helaman 5. There was a lot of rich information there that I’m struggling to recall (my own presentation was coming up soon, so my mind was a little distracted). 

My own session. I presented in the second afternoon session on the role the Book of Mormon played in the life of Zerah Pulsipher, the subject of the biography I published earlier this year. My paper tries to add nuance to earlier scholars’ claims that early Latter-day Saints didn’t read the Book of Mormon much. Janiece Johnson presented on the same question, and her project went considerably deeper than mine. She showed convincingly that while early Latter-day Saints may not have cited the Book of Mormon explicitly very often, they were immersed in its language and wove it constantly into their writing. She is working on a book, and I suspect it will change the narrative about how early Latter-day Saints used the text.

Closing lecture. The conference concluded with Elise Boxer’s lecture, “The Book of Mormon, Doctrine of Discovery, and Federal Indian Policy.” I’ve mentioned her several times this year. Her book has earned awards, and she has been a keynote speaker at both the Mormon History Association and BOMSA conferences. There is a reason for that. Boxer brings Indigenous perspectives to bear on how the Book of Mormon and Mormonism have shaped the way Latter-day Saints view and treat Indigenous peoples in the United States, and she provides scholars with an intellectual framework for thinking about it. I have a great deal of respect for her work, even if I don’t always agree, and I appreciated her remarks.

Takeaways

Taken together, the sessions showed a field increasingly willing to look closely at how the Book of Mormon has been illustrated, written about, translated, and used, including the uncomfortable parts. I’m especially looking forward to the forthcoming work from Champoux and Reeve, Johnson, and Richards.